1) Easy: you already provide an office with internet access – if they want to use something somewhere else, that is their decision, especially since you don’t require them to work at home. Remember, they are the ones asking – not you.

2) Not sure what would need to be rewritten…

3) If your employees are more productive from home, the it proves the ‘office’ theory wrong. Raising goals could actually be counter-productive (though not necessarily). Raising stress for a work-at-home situation would in-turn bring the employee back to your office, and now you have to pay for them to use your site (water, heat, electricity for computers, etc…)

4) see #1

5) That’s a downfall of work-at-home situations. If there are enough situations per day/week that justify their presence that would have to be accounted for. If you’re asking the question out of fear, there are always ‘what-if’ scenarious that can be generated.

6) How often does internet fail? In my house I have not had one day in 6 months, whereas at my office, it’s at least once a month…

7) IT and Troubleshooting – another cost/effective analysis. How often are the occurances? See #5

See #1

9) Depends on how far your remote worker lives. If your office is in Portland, Maine and your remote worker is in San Diego, is a different issue than 20 minutes away (average commute distance). Also, instead of the IT guy coming from outside into your office, outsource someone locally in your remote-worker’s area – you could probably save money…

10) You do of course. You have to make agreements that anything contained on that computer is property of your company. If they want to start their own competitive business using your computer, you can take the computer at any time. Again, if you’re afraid of your employee using the computer to look at facebook, then I would revert to #3, if your employee is less productive, then you don’t allow it

11) Reference #2

12) Get creative – Skype/Google chat/etc. If they’re sales then they probably have a company cell anyway. The money you’re saving on their electricity and toilet flushing at the office could be directed there

13) If not, then that’s a hinderance, but I’d be suprised if theres not a call forwarding feature built-in to your advance phone. An account I frequently deal with has this already set up (company is in So. California and works from Montana)

14) Probably, but I’m sure this could be worked out. Many companies are moving to entirely remote and there are solutions out there.

15) The children of the parents in the cubicle next to them… who always have a comment for everything

16) Maybe something the employee must demonstrate before hand – contractual agreement. If they work from home, you are exempt from claims…

17) see #16

18) Possibly, but how many days have you gone to work when you should have stayed home…

These are college education professionals with years of experience under their belt and in our industry they are best of breed. I trust them implicitly and have deep visibility into their production metrics to ensure my trust is not misplaced.

I’d send them all home right now if I could. But I can’t. Yet.

The reasons why are worth considering for anyone thinking of putting together a case to telecommute. Any of my team who comes in here with a researched answer and suggested solutions to MY issues jump to the top of my list of telecommuting candidates.

Here are some of the questions I need to get resolved to make this happen.

Who pays for the internet access ?
Does the associates employment contract need to be rewritten ?
Do the goals and objectives that an associate have need modification ?
Does the internet access need to be upgraded ?
Can I mandate that the employee comes into the office at short notice in the event of a workload volume problem or crisis situation ?
If the internet access fails is the employee required to come to the office ?
Whose responsibility is troubleshooting and fixing IT related issues ?
Are there business contracts necessary so we can get SLA’s from Comcast etc. ?
In the event of a minor failure that needs desktop support who pays for shipping or transporting the computer or technician to and from the remote site ?
Who owns the computer ?
Whose insurance covers damage ?
Who pays for the phone charges ?
Does the home network support my advanced phones?
Is there a need to place a VPN concentrator ?
Who’s fault are those noisy kids in the background ?
Do we need to send our ergonomic consultants to examine the workplace to prevent liability for RSI claims etc ?
Who pays for any upgraded furniture that ergonomic study reveals ?
Will the employee be tempted to work when they are ill rather than take a sick day?

and so on and so forth . i have a stack of these questions that I am researching with HR and Legal at our company.

Anyone who really wants to make this happen for themselves will research these matters with the right parties , present case studies of successful implementation , and present a proposal that addresses as many of the questions above as possible.

If you are clever enough to put together a proposal that gets your manager further along AND STILL make it seem like his idea you can start planning which pajamas to wear to work.

Additionally, management needs to understand that productivity should be measured by results not time spent at the workstation. Many ineffective bosses are more comfortable when they can see people sitting at their desks rather than working remotely.

Good sales managers, for example, realize that sales don’t happen in the office; they happen on the road. Nevertheless, there are some managers who insist that staff spend more time in the home office. They also go on sales calls with their highest performers and generally hover over their sales staff like a Socialist looking for a Capitalist with money.

Working at home will never catch on until managers learn how to lead not police workers – not an easy task for insecure bosses. And, as the writer pointed out, workers must project a professional attitude and get a reputation for getting the job done. Otherwise even good bosses will be reluctant to expand work at home opportunities.